Stephen’s gaze was positively condemning. “Oh.” He didn’t say anything for a few long seconds, but Bliss was instantly embarrassed that she was the legitimate daughter, the one who bore her father’s name, the odd woman out, so to speak. “Well, aren’t you the lucky one?” he finally whispered, sarcasm lacing his words. “What do you want from—”

“Don’t, okay? Just don’t say it,” Tiffany warned.

Tossing a hank of black hair out of his eyes, Stephen shifted from one dirty sneaker to the other. “So, can I go now?”

“May I, but sure.”

Bliss could almost feel the boy’s relief.

Tiffany let go of his arm. As he bounded up the stairs two at a time, he didn’t give his mother or her guests so much as a backward glance.

“I think it’s time I got back,” Bliss said, standing. She saw a movement through the window and spied Dee Dee, Mason’s daughter, sitting in a patio chair. Wearing cutoff jeans and a sleeveless T-shirt, she lazed, one foot resting on the opposite bare knee as she flipped through a magazine and petted a black cat that was curled up in her lap.

The girl seemed pensive and slightly sad, Bliss thought.

Glancing at her watch, Katie scowled, tiny lines forming across her forehead. “Oops. You’re right. I’ve got to scoot and pick up Josh from his friend’s house so that I can get him to baseball practice. Well, uh, gee, I really don’t know what to say, except maybe thanks for letting us come by and bend your ear,” she said to Tiffany.

“No problem.” Tiffany walked to the door, but didn’t ask them to return as they stepped onto the porch. “And just for the record, tell your father that if he wants to talk to me, he can call himself, or stop by—not that I have any interest in dealing with him. But I think it was underhanded to send you two.”

“It wasn’t his idea,” Katie assured her. “It was mine.” Tiffany didn’t reply, just arched a disbelieving brow as she closed the door.

“Boy, that was a good idea,” Bliss mocked.

“What do you mean? I think it went well, all things considered.” Together, Katie and Bliss walked beneath the shade trees and around the corner of the main house, where Bliss caught another glimpse of Mason’s daughter.

“Are you kidding?” Bliss couldn’t believe her ears and decided right then and there that Katie Kinkaid was an eternal and somewhat-myopic optimist.

“I suspect that deep down she likes you,” Katie added.

“Oh, right.”

“I mean it.”

“Then I’d hate to see how she treats an enemy.”